The books and articles I like to read are those where it is obvious that the author started from a collection of impressive research findings and built on those to gather more material and to be able to develop a general theory explaining the facts. I like these types of books because they offer the most evidentiary support for claims made and, for that reason, they seem to me to be the most convincing and interesting.
Stanley Greenspan's "Great Kids" is very much not this type of book. For starters, the book claims to offer the 10 essential qualities to nurture in a kid for "greatness," but these qualities were proposed and agreed upon by medical and business professionals prompted to think of the qualities possessed by the "great" people that they know. Borderline scientific at best: this method assumes that the qualities people like to see are the qualities which make kids happy and successful. It further implies that we should bring up our kids to possess the qualities that people like to see, even if those aren't necessarily the qualities from which our kids would benefit the most. I personally think our primary focus should be on the latter.
Once the top 10 qualities were selected, it seems that Dr. Greenspan spent the next several months freely associating on the experiences, in which these qualities may be demonstrated and nurtured, threading countless anecdotes with jumbled narrative to achieve the unfortunate more-is-less effect. Granted, Dr. Greenspan is kind of a big deal in the field of child psychoanalysis, so one can presume that a lot of the claims made in the book are derived from research and clinical work discoveries. Unfortunately, the delivery of these ideas conveys no indication of this.
I forced myself to make it through 4 complete chapters (of 10 total) in order to be able to, with some authority, say that you can get the full scope of what he's saying simply by reading each chapter title and then each chapter's last two sections titled "Encouraging" X and "Helping" X or "Steps to" X, where X is the quality discussed in the chapter. I did that for the remainder of the chapters and was a lot less bored with the book (and frankly, wasted a lot less time on it).
I would not recommend this book; there is very little to learn here, mostly because of method in which it is presented.
These are the types of books that keep my attention for only a couple of chapters also.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, happiness and success are internal feelings, not external characteristics. Therefore, there can't be 10 universal qualities to lead a person to what most people search for all or most of their lifetime - personal happiness, success, and fulfillment.